Here’s my setup and a quick run down of how I do things - and I’m sure everyone has their own ways of doing things.

First of all I work off of a macbook. It’s super easy as the two programs I use come stock with the laptop - Garage Band and iMovie.

I record in Garage Band. I just started using a new interface as my Tascam 1800 died unexpectedly It was capable of 12 tracks, although I only ever used two at once. My intent was to record the band, but it’s always been too much of a hassle at the gig to set everything up.

I now use a Scarlett 212 USB interface - juts bought it new for under $200. It is designed with Garage Band in mind. No need to download drivers. It’s just plug and play. Gotta like the name as well.

I’ve been using a Shure SM58 I picked up used. It plugs direct into the Scarlett with an XLR patch chord. The Scralett plugs direct into my laptop's USB port and is powered by the USB - an awesome feature.

I record direct into garage band, typically laying down a rhythm track first, and then blast that through a pair of el cheap studio monitors and lay down some leeds. Although I also lay down rhythm tracks on a looper and just do things in one take, recording the whole affair which is what I did with the last video I posted (playin’ licks). Garage band is pretty much idiot proof. I learned it on the fly in a few hours, but there are lots of great tutorials on youtube if you get lost.

I then export the finished recording to iTunes. That way I can grab it and import it into iMovie.

I capture the video with my iPhone. I then load that into iPhoto so I can import that into iMovie.

In iMovie I import my video(s), and then import my iTunes track. I align the video footage by looking at the audio track graphic signatures. I give myself a little extra video up front in the recording and trim that off until my video aligns with my imported audio.

IMovie has lots of capabilities, most of which I learned about from watching youtube tutorials. You can crop your video for close ups (although the resolution tends to get grainy), you can pan your cropped area to make it look like the camera is moving, you can add special effects and you can add transitions between video sequences (which I always do). All of these things come with options. You can also add text. You can import photos, and audio (which you need to do for studio recording).

A lot of what folks post on youtube is probably done in iMovie. It’s simple, quick and intuitive.

I then export the finished product to my desktop and upload to youtube. Once on youtube I can delete from my computer, because basically having a youtube channel is like having free storage in the cloud.

That’s about it.

The real secret - you need a mac unless you are computer savy. I’d never be able to do this stuff on a PC. It would simply be too much effort for me.

I just got the Scarlet and can vouch for it. It's very easy to use with no setup (at least with a Mac), and it has a very clean sounding preamp. Mine came with a lite version of Ableton Live that is great software, but it only allows 8 tracks in the lite version.